Inside the Helmet

by Michael Strahan

  Arriving late for work carries a dock in pay, starting at $500 and doubling with each violation. Freakin’ Lincoln Tunnel! Plus, I really don’t want to be late for work because it’s Cowboys week. I feel a good one coming on and preparing for the Cowboys always brings excitement. It attracts more media, more attention and the old reliable plethora of Tuna stories. Love it. I’m excited to play against Drew Bledsoe because I know he’s one quarterback who holds on to the ball long enough to become a nice, easy target.

  There are certain quarterbacks I play against that I know I have a better chance of sacking. I KNOW my chances are better against Bledsoe, Donovan and a young guy like Romo. Manning, Brady or Brees are harder to hone in on, though.

  But it’s Bledsoe week, and the last thing I want is to miss even a minute of work. Weeks like this are too much fun. I truly don’t want to be late but, hey, it happens. Certain things we cannot control.

  Out of my control this morning is a car that’s stopped inside the tunnel. This unforeseen obstacle in my race to work forces me and about five thousand other people to collectively scream profanities at the knucklehead who forgot that cars generally run on fuel and that said fuel must be inside the tank.

  Many of the cars stuck near the 31st Street underground pathway are carrying people who can simply explain away the stalled vehicle to their bosses. Or in many cases, the boss can jump in with a Lincoln Tunnel horror story of his own. My boss could be Al Yeganek, aka the man made famous on Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” episode. No ’scuse for you!

  You have to understand my boss, the head coach, and our history together. As big a week as Dallas week is, I just decide to cool it and not get worked up. Knowing I’m already going to be late, I stop worrying, stop rushing and just cruise on over to the stadium at my leisure. But before you throw me under the bus for being an insubordinate (one of my boss’s favorite words), there’s a rhyme to my rhythm here. Before passing judgment I must explain how and where it all began. Welcome to our soap opera, As the Tom Turns.

  The first time I ever met Tom Coughlin face-to-face was his first season here, 2004, the day before his off-season program was to begin. The two of us spent the morning exchanging words about an event I had committed to in Hawaii long before Coughlin ever took the job. This event, it so happened, fell on the same day as the inaugural meeting of Coach’s off-season program.

  Earlier in the day I had felt that Tom actually set me up when he had my new defensive coordinator, Tim Lewis, phone me at the ridiculous hour of eight o’clock Sunday morning to “introduce” himself. I could see eight A.M. Monday through Friday, but on a Sunday?

  Both Lewis and Coughlin knew I had a prior commitment and would not be attending the first day of “voluntary” workouts. While I would certainly fulfill my commitments, I simply couldn’t make it on Day One. It wouldn’t be right to commit to a company or a charity and then bail out.

  Considering it was eight A.M., my first thought was, Uh-oh, something bad just happened. I was wrong. Instead, something bad was about to happen. I was about to get bamboozled.

  “Michael, how you doing?” Lewis asked. “We’re looking forward to working with you. We want to put you in a better position to get you more sacks.”

  “That’s great, Coach, but I’m not worried about the sacks. I’ll get the sacks no matter what defense we’re playing. I just want to know that our defense will be a great one. Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do.”

  I was anticipating what was next. The bait for the setup.

  “Michael, I can’t wait to see you on Monday and…”

  I have absolutely no idea what he said after that because, in essence, he had just moved his pawn. I was figuring out my next move. I’ve been around long enough to know a setup when I see one coming, and this was a setup, and an insulting one at that. My first-ever impression of my new coaches was that these dudes were trying to sandbag me.

  “Coach, I’m not going to be able to make the first one.”

  “Oh?” said Lewis, not so innocently. “What are you talking about?”

  “I told you guys I wasn’t going to be there. I have a commitment.”

  “Does Coach know?”

  “I assume he does.”

  Then came the setup.

  “Hold on, Michael, actually Coach happens to be right here.”

  Yeah, right. As if. Wow, Coach Coughlin just happened to be walking by his office at that exact second? What a wonderful coincidence! You’re a great actor, Tim. You guys really had me fooled.

  Coughlin got on the phone without Lewis’s “hello, my left end warrior” tone in his voice. Instead, my first-ever conversation with the third head coach of my career might as well have been in a dark room with a single light shining on my face. Let the interrogation begin.

  The first thing my new coach said to me was, “Who is this appearance for? What event is it? I can’t believe you won’t be here for my first meeting! Michael, you need to be here! Change your flight. It’s important that you’re here. It’s about the team.”

  Wow! Take a breath, sir. Nice to meet you, too, sir. I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with this man, so I tried to pacify him by asking if I could jump in the car and come in that very afternoon to meet with him and the rest of the coaches in person. Tom reluctantly accepted my peace offering. I figured he thought it would provide him the perfect opportunity to grill me in person. Seems my assessment was accurate.

  Once I got there, the first person I saw was Tim Lewis. He walked me into Tom’s office, and just as I suspected, Tom immediately began grilling me about the appearance again. So I figured I’d show a little bend. I told Tom that I would try to move my flight if possible, come in early, sit through his orientation and meeting and then take off.

  At our first meeting, Tom approached me as if to say, “You’ve had a pretty good career, but if you listen to every single thing I say, I’ll make you a real football player.”

  On the way home I called Jean, my wife at the time, and told her, “Enjoy this year because it will be our last in New York. This man is crazy! He’s nuts! I’m not finishing up my career with this type of coach.”

  The whole thing began to eat away at me to the point that I called my marketing agent, Maury Gostfrand, and told him about our conversation. I’d decided I wouldn’t change my flight. Why should I bend for a man who had clearly set the stage for a game? If I budged, that would send a message that he could bully me and push me around. He didn’t need to start off our first meeting so aggressively. He could have asked me, not told me.

  Today’s player is different from years ago. Today’s player is his own separate corporation subcontracted out for one single goal. Unlike yesterday’s player, today’s player is given so much money, we can decide to walk away at any time and hang up our cleats and not have to deal with this crap. We have the advantage of leaving on our own terms, more so than in any other era of sports.

  Today’s player feels empowered by free agency. Just look at Terrell Owens. He got himself out of San Francisco by complaining incessantly. Then he got himself out of a trade to Baltimore. Then he eventually moped his way out of Philly. Hell, the NFL and the union intervened to get T.O. out of a trade to the Ravens. Then it battled in his deal with the Eagles. Of course, players are going to believe we can take matters into our own hands.

  Half these guys complain in order to change cities. Daunte Culpepper did it to get out of Minnesota. When he was nearly traded to Tennessee, he told the head coach and general manager point-blank he wasn’t going. Willis McGahee complained his way out of Buffalo. LaVar Arrington did the same after a bad couple of years in Washington. His former teammate Laveranues Coles complained his way out of DC. Shit, I tried the same thing earlier in my career when I thought the Giants were playing hardball on my deal. I don’t think we’re arrogant or overstepping the line by doing so. It’s just the way it is sometimes.

  Today’s player has the money to be more vocal. When I first came into the
league, when a coach said something, you swallowed it. But as free agency swept through and changed our game, players’ attitudes changed. I had a teammate named Will Peterson who now goes by William James. Will signed a big-time deal with the Giants a few years ago and decided he would no longer take Coach Coughlin’s BS. It got to the point where the two of them got into a very heated argument in the locker room that ended with Will throwing his arms out in the air, staring at Tom as if to say, “Come on, you want some of this?”

  Today’s player doesn’t do much without knowing what kind of security he has. Will knew the salary-cap ramifications of being cut. If a guy has a cap hit that makes it impossible to cut him, what’s a coach going to do to him? I’d say most of us wouldn’t take it to the extreme of Will P., but when push comes to shove, we always know what’s in our back pocket. Not only does today’s player hold the trump card, he’ll drop it on a dime. Yesterday’s player had no such trump card.

  Peterson ended up fracturing his vertebrae and spent about a year rehabbing before signing with the Eagles last season. But before he broke his back, the other luxury he had, which is what a lot of us rely on to give us security, is to fight for himself. If you can play, somebody will pay. Today we think, “I’ll go make money somewhere else.” And for the most part, we’re right.

  Ours is a league of egos. Owners, general managers and coaches love to believe that even if another team can’t control or get the best out of a player, they can. They’ll force themselves to believe that a kid who is unsalvageable will suddenly become a model citizen and Pro Bowl player under their tutelage. At least eight out of ten times, the team and the coach are just fooling themselves.

  When I started in this league, even the malcontents learned to keep their mouths shut. Coaches back then were different, too. If a guy was an asshole, he’d not only find himself out of a job with his current team, he’d also get blackballed around the league. I think what T.O. did more than anything was to emphasize the fact that teams simply aren’t listening to other teams anymore. How could a guy with that much baggage get another big contract thrown at him? The pressure to win is so much stronger, teams are now willing to take risks and gamble on players, hoping they’ll change their spots. Now, instead of fearing you’ll get a bad reputation in the league, the owners’ failure to make our behavior affect our signings makes us unafraid of guys like Tom Coughlin.

  I bet you if Adam “Pacman” Jones was cut tomorrow despite his one-year suspension by the NFL for frequent runins with the law, a couple of teams would still be climbing all over themselves to sign him. They all want to win so badly, they’ll convince themselves he can be rehabilitated under their watchful eye.

  Hate to tell you fellas, but it doesn’t happen that way. We don’t change that drastically. We might grow up, but we won’t change that dramatically. The most you can hope for is that players will smarten up before it’s too late, which does happen in this league. My good friend John Abraham, the former Jets Pro Bowler and current Atlanta Falcon, had a drinking problem. The team knew about it, yet they treaded lightly around it. He was too good a player to discipline. They were lucky he decided to grow up and sober up on his own. He realized he was screwing up his career and stopped showing up drunk to work. He quit cold turkey and threw himself into religion instead of booze.

  Just look how much juice players now have. John Abraham could still go to the facility, hammered from the night before (actually from an hour before), smelling of booze, and yet he could continue as long as he didn’t get arrested. You can booze as long as you produce. Your teammates will confront you before your coaches do because you can stand up to your coaches as long you know you are a good, solid player. They won’t do anything to you.

  As for the argument between Tom and Will, I don’t recall Will getting fined, benched, suspended, nothing. It all started because Tom told us not to talk about injuries, and within minutes, Will decided to tell the media about his back injury. He didn’t care about Tom’s rules. He was going to protect his own reputation whether the team liked it or not. That, my friend, is the epitome of today’s player.

  Knowing I had a choice, and knowing Tom couldn’t just up and cut me, I felt like I could push the envelope. If I was going to hate him, I had the freedom to hate him. Today’s player will not hide the hate.

  I began to question whether I could play even one year under this man. Prior to my meeting, several players from Jacksonville who had played under Coughlin called me to warn me of his unusual rules and rigidness.

  As players, we exchange information about coaches. Just like they scout us for free agency, we scout them for free agency. We compare notes. When a coach moves on to another team, players will usually call somebody who has previously worked with the new man.

  When John Fox moved from our defensive coordinator to head coach at Carolina, the leaders in their locker room called Armstead and me to get the scouting report on him. What are his strengths? His weaknesses? What pisses him off? What kind of guy is he off the field? What kind of system does he use? Have you ever had a run-in with him? What things did you love about him? What things did you hate about him? The most asked question is: Is he fair?

  I initially thought Tom’s reputation would end up hurting our chances in free agency, or at least force us to overpay the hell out of some guys. But one thing I learned about players during the last off-season: New York and money completely supersede anybody’s bad reputation. New York is too attractive an option with too much glitz and glamour and the chance of being a star for a player to pass up. A coach’s reputation has a bigger impact in other cities that don’t have as many off-the-field perks as New York. Still, I thought, if ever a reputation could kill our chances in free agency, it was Tom’s.

  The reviews I received about my new coach were horrendous. Two thumbs, two index fingers, a couple of pinkies and two ring fingers down, way down! I had at least ten players call me about Tom. All but one had horrible reviews. I mean, some were absolutely awful. One player I talked to called him an abusive warden. One good review out of ten guys? That’s not good, folks.

  In my eyes Tom started off on the wrong foot with me, before saying word one. Yet I’ll admit I made the mistake of viewing him with a preconceived notion of what a jerk he would be. I didn’t take the mature route by making a decision based solely on my experience. In the beginning, Tom probably could have told me the sky is blue and I would have questioned him. What kind of dummy does this warden think I am?

  When I called to inform Tom I could neither cancel my appearance nor change my flight, to say he was infuriated would be an understatement. Based on his reaction, I thought the man had lost his mind. He wanted the names and numbers of the people running the event so he could call them personally and cancel. This guy was one of those scary crazy guys. I figured if he could be this delusional, well, who the hell knows what he’s capable of during the season. So I figured I’d better try to bend a little.

  “Coach, how about this. I’ll come in at six A.M. to meet with you and the other coaches, go through your strength and conditioning orientation and hear you out before you meet with the team. Then I’ll fly out.”

  Tom agreed, but even the way he agreed was confrontational. I knew our personalities would eventually clash big-time.

  Monday morning, day of our meeting, I honestly, truly and absolutely believed I was getting punk’d by Ashton Kucher. I believed that since Punk’d was so popular and a few other NFL stars, like Warren Sapp, Jeff Garcia and Jerome Bettis, had fallen victim, somebody had set me up, too. Seriously. My first-ever OFFICIAL meeting with the new head coach, and there was no doubt in my mind that it was all a setup. It had to be a joke. It had to be!

  I walked into Coughlin’s office. Sitting there on his desk was a legal pad with one single piece of yellow paper left. The rest had been ripped out. A yellow No. 2 pencil lay on top of the pad.

  “Michael, this pad and pencil is for you,” he said as he stared through me. “I’m g
oing to give you the same speech I will be giving the rest of the team when we meet later. I want you to write down key points. Then I want you to take it with you on the airplane and think about these points on your trip.”

  Man, you MTV folks, you’ve got some imagination. How do you think these things up? And how did you get Coughlin to go along with it? Okay, come on out now, Ashton.

  About halfway through Coughlin’s speech, I started to think maybe this wasn’t a setup. On those hidden camera shows, they don’t let you suffer too long. We had crossed the time boundary. All of a sudden I thought to myself, “This guy is actually serious? There are no cameras. This is not a joke. Are you freakin’ kidding me?”

  When I finally came to grips with reality, my first thought was: “Is my twelfth season really going to resemble fourth-grade detention?” I couldn’t pay attention because I couldn’t grasp what was happening. He spouted a bunch of quotes meant to inspire me. But I was well past the inspirational stage. After he finished his speech, I went downstairs, put his sheet of paper in my locker, closed it and took off for Hawaii.

  That started what would be a very, very tumultuous first year with my new head coach. In today’s NFL, things are so volatile, we live in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately society. So I raced back from Hawaii in less than a day to make sure I showed up at the second and third day of Camp Coughlin 2004. But once I got there, I resented the man to the point where if I had been driving along and saw Tom crossing the street, I might have sped up.

  From that instant, my relationship with Tom sucked. I did not want to play for him. I wanted nothing to do with the man. It was shaping up to be the most horrific time of my career. All before I learned about all of his rules. When I finally learned about the rules from his handbook for success…I’m still at a loss for words to this day.

  So we still have that little matter of a Lincoln Tunnel breakdown that resulted in a fine. But to explain further what it’s like to play in the NFL under a guy you view as a tyrant, let’s continue to examine our history.